304 LUCK, OR CUNNING ? 



said oa the otlier side, that many classes of animals 

 have settled down into sessile habits, whUe a perhaps 

 even larger number are, like spiders, habitual liers in 

 wait rather than travellers in search of food. I would 

 ask my reader, therefore, to see the opinion that it 

 is better to go in search of prey as formulated, and 

 finding its organic expression, in animals, and the 

 other — that it is better to be ever on the look-out 

 to make the best of what chance brings up to them — 

 in plants. Some few intermediate forms still record 

 to us the long struggle during which the schism was 

 . not yet complete, and the halting between two opinions 

 which it might be expected that some organisms should 

 exhibit. 



" Neither class," I said in " Alps and Sanctuaries," 

 " has been quite consistent. Who ever is, or can be ? 

 Every extreme, every opinion carried to its logical 

 end, will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out 

 roots and boughs and leaves; this is a kind of loco- 

 motion ; and, as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed 

 out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may 

 be called travelling; a man of consistent character 

 will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril with- 

 out regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled 

 compromise" (p. 198). 



Having called attention to this view, and com- 

 mended it to the consideration of my readers, I 

 proceed to another, which should not have been left 

 to be touched upon only in a final chapter, and which, 

 indeed, seems to require a book to itself — I refer to 

 the origin and nature of the feelings which those who 



